Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.

Friday, November 02, 2012

Amazon launches Kindle Windows 8 app

Amazon has just introduced Kindle
Windows 8 app. It’s ready for download from Windows Store [link]. The app is free, and so far it got almost 700
ratings. The average rank is 3 stars out of 5.

The new Kindle app offers standard
features that are available in other Kindle apps, including Whispersync –
a technology which automatically syncs last page read, bookmarks, notes, and
highlights across all the Kindle devices and/or apps you own or have access to.

What’s very important, the app is
available worldwide in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and
Portuguese. You’ll get instant access to over 1.5 million books – and that
includes over 200,000 titles, which are exclusive to Kindle Store (you can’t
find them in any other ebookstore). Over 650,000 books are priced at $4.99 or
less; over 1.2 million are $9.99 or less.

Using the new features of Windows
8, the Kindle app enables customers to pin their books to the Start screen for
instant access to their favorite titles and search their library and Kindle
store with the Search charm. Customers can also use the Share charm to easily
share favorite passages and recommended books to friends and other apps without
leaving the Kindle application.

“The Kindle ecosystem offers
customers massive selection and the lowest prices, along with hundreds of
thousands of books that are only available in the Kindle Store. We’re excited
to make the best content selection, along with all of the benefits of the
Kindle ecosystem, available on Windows 8,” said Dorothy Nicholls, Vice
President, Amazon Kindle. “We’re thrilled that leading manufacturers have
selected the Kindle ecosystem for pre-load on their new Windows 8 devices.”

The online tutorial of Kindle
Windows 8 app is available here. The entire family of free reading apps
includes